ABSTRACT
We all use gestures – think of the last time you accidentally pulled out in front of another car and the passing driver waved a clenched fist at you – or something similar! Even baboons gesture! In classrooms, we often see teachers gesturing, for example, they put their fingers to their lips, they raise a hand in the air as a signal for silence, they point to the door and so on. Sigmund Freud (1905/1953, 52) once said about the human: ‘if his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips’. Gesturing is a key part of our work as teachers and an important component of your X-Factor. Of course, gesturing is as old as the human race. Some gestures can be traced back to southern Italy in the year 690 bce where we get the image of ‘horns’ for a bull from bull worship and the head toss for ‘no’. The great Roman statesman and philosopher, Cicero, talked about the body being a musical instrument with an eloquence which involved gesticulation as well as speech. Indeed, there are some who argue that the ancient Greeks and Romans relied more on gestures in everyday life having a more ‘lively feel for the meaning of gestures’ than we do ( Wundt, 1921/1973, 66). Indeed, Wundt contended that they were better at reading them than we are today. The X-Factor was alive and well in the villas of Rome and Athens.
